In Stacked: A 32DDD Reports from the Front, a mildly amusing look at boobs (2 at a time), Susan Seligson introduces readers to her own pair with the caution that ”I’ve come to believe that I can significantly alter the events of my day by either flaunting my breasts or hiding them.”

Stacked has higher aims than just her own self examination. Seligson sets out to demystify the breasts here in a single, individual way, to discuss what they mean to those that have them, those without, and those who admire/dislike them.

And, she mostly succeeds in accomplishing her well rounded aims. Stacked is a well written odyssey through our sometimes bizarre cultural obsession with the sometimes most prominent aspects of the female form. Americans are a strange group of people — a motley collection of puritanical and profane impulses. No where is that more pronounced than in our cultural blind spot regarding breasts.

Seligson explores that obsessionary blind spot head-on — she writes about her experiences in speaking with top-free activists, plastic surgeons, augmentation and reduction patients, big bust strippers and adult stars, transsexuals and cross dressers, and the editor of a now defunct big bust fetish magazine. She talks with gays and straights, married and single, the fashionable and the geek. She also discusses things with leading authorities on bra fitting; the women who work at some of the best foundation stores in New York City. (This is more important than you would think — the vast majority of women wear an incorrect bra size, be it from vanity or ignorance.)

And, more than all that, Stacked is also a recollection of her personal odyssey with her breasts. She is, of course, exceptionally endowed (oYo), and that fact has affected her life in a myriad of ways. She is funny and accepting about her breast size, but that acceptance has taken some time to work. A lot of the book discusses body image as Seligson talks to many other and different women about body image issues as they relate to the size of their breasts.

And, yes, her continual references to her own breasts can be off-putting in the book, but as Seligson will attest — her breasts come through the door first. She addresses that dichotomy throughout the book as it relates to her experiences with acceptance, perception, and respect. There is the man who ignores her in winter, but almost stalks her in the summer months when her shape is more apparent. There are men who think less of her talents because of her size. There is the man who crashed his car when straining for a better peak at her peaks. And, just the fact that she lugs around 3 pounds of breast on each side takes some getting used to.

Seligson writes with warmth about her subjects as well, both the physical and the figurative. She doesn’t judge the people she encounters so much as she shares in an animated conversation about a subject they share an interest in. The one change in tone, perhaps, is her time spent with the cross-dressing community at a conference in Provincetown, Massachusetts. It is apparent that the men she encounters (one who went so far as to get his own implants) are, in short, boobs themselves. They comes across as a bit too self-satisfied in themselves and she is astounded that they intimate that their partners are the ones who have to accept them for who they are, without any give back by themselves. It makes for a decidedly weird interaction as the men who like to dress as a woman would are very much intolerant of the views and feelings of their female partners. And, they seem to think of themselves as peers of Seligson and experts in dressing as a woman, which leads to a large disconnect as they dress less than woman and more like prostitutes. It makes for strangely amusing and also kind of difficult and sad encounter.

Stacked [2007, Bloomsbury USA, 240 pages] is an interesting and well rounded look into objects that fill bras and memories, personal and cultural histories, and some really tight sweaters (three stars).

Note: For those that doubt that Ms. Seligson is, indeed, as big as the title suggests, a simple web search will turn up a photo of her topless that will answer the question. Some web commentators have been less than kind about her physical appearance but the vitriol seems misplaced in my opinion, and says less about the author than the commentators.

Sources
http://www.bloomsburyusa.com/Authors/microsite.asp?id=1346&cf=0


Recommended: Yes